Abstract

This study focused to identify the impact of demographic and economic attributes of the consumers that influence on fast food consumption and consumers’ buying behaviour in Moratuwa municipal council area which is located in Sri Lanka. Data were collected through a consumer survey with a structured questionnaire conducted in the study area and 100 samples from 50 restaurants were selected randomly. An ordered probit model was carried out to find out the relationships between a selected demographic and economic attributes of consumers such as age, education, gender, civil status, number of family members, distance to the nearest fast food outlet, conscious of health and disease concern on fast food consumption, consumers’ perception on convenience of fast food, entertainment, income, employment status, and price opinion about fast food that affect on buying behaviour of the consumers in the fast food restaurants in Sri Lanka. In addition to that, other econometrics techniques such as, descriptive statistics, chi–square test and marginal effects also applied in the data. Frequency of fast food consumption considered as dependent variable which is as an ordinal outcome variable and all other explanatory variables namely demographic and economic attributes of consumers were used as categorical and binary variables in the study. Results from the ordered probit model reveals that, age of the respondent, education level, employment and civil status, distance to the nearest fast food outlet from their home have statistically significant and they are the key determinants in the consumption of fast food. The findings of this study will help for fast food managers to design their marketing strategies which are most suitable to fit with the consumers’ attitudes and expectations and their buying behaviour of fast food restaurants in Sri Lanka.

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